Deal with the Devil

by J. Gunnar Grey

  “I know too many men, and women too, have been hanged on circumstances which didn’t stand up to much scrutiny. But I’d rather it didn’t happen on my watch.” He sighed under Kettering’s intensifying stare. “If he does turn out to be guilty, of course, that’s another matter. But we need facts to prove it first.”

  “Well, you know your job best.” Kettering sounded doubtful. “Where does one start looking among all this?”

  “With you.” Hackney fumbled his own little-used pad and pencil from a pocket. He flicked it open to a blank page and looked up into Kettering’s equally blank but rapidly reddening stare. “I don’t mean you’re under suspicion. But until I know where everyone was, or was supposed to be, I won’t be able to determine who wasn’t, if you catch my drift. Please just tell me about Saturday night.”

  “Well. In that case.” Kettering again stroked his mustache. “The klaxon went off just before nine thirty Saturday night, but I’d have to look at the duty log for precisely when. We expected to be hit, same as the RAF base eighteen miles to our northeast, so we went into the shelters as the flak gunners got to work. But just after ten, we received word from Civil Defense at least one plane had been brought down and a parachute sighted near Patchbourne. So we organized for the search — ”

  “The same men as today?” Hackney wrote as fast as he could. He’d never learned shorthand, worse luck.

  Kettering paused. “One company was the same, Leftenant Daingerforth’s Eleventh Field Company. The other out Saturday night was Leftenant McCoy’s 208th. Today the 208th are involved in Colonel Birnbaum’s exercises, repelling pretended German invaders from Oxford proper.” He removed his peaked cap and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “Unless someone has a day pass or is on sick call, those men are currently quite occupied. I suppose it could be called a blessing in disguise for them.”

  “Was there a third company involved today but not Saturday night?”

  He repositioned his cap. “Leftenant Gibbs’ 210th. They remained in the air raid shelters, off duty.”

  “Can this be conclusively proven?”

  “Certainly.” Kettering’s voice was stiff. “Sentries on duty at all exits. No one would have gotten through without authorization and none was forthcoming.”

  “And you were out Saturday night, as well?”

  “I was.” Kettering sighed. “I see what you’re getting at. You’re trying to whittle down the number of men who could possibly be suspected.”

  “Yes,” Hackney said. “Of course, we can’t assume anything at this point.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning every man in each of those three units will be asked to account for his movements at the times of both murders.”

  “You chaps have your work cut out for you. That’s about two hundred soldiers.” Kettering pursed his lips, then cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t suppose our staff could be of assistance here, taking statements and such? Not to imply your lads aren’t capable, but it would be a lovely training exercise.”

  “Any assistance the military can offer will be gratefully accepted,” Hackney said. “Like everyone else, we’re shorthanded.”

  “Excellent.” Kettering paused. “Were you in the first war?”

  Hackney heard the machine-gun fire of the Somme in his inner ear. “I was and know all about training exercises in August heat.”

  Kettering grimaced. “In full field kit, cursing the old bugger responsible for hauling you out — I never thought, back in 1925 when I joined, I’d ever be the old bugger himself. Just goes to show.”

  It was hard to produce a smile. But he managed. “So on Saturday night, you organized for the search?”

  “Yes. We drove to Patchbourne and Bicester, oriented ourselves with the jerry’s suspected landing site, and formed up into two long lines, facing each other across country and working toward each other. I thought we’d corner him easily but somehow we missed him.” Kettering shrugged. “Most of the jerries shot down lately aren’t too keen on running. With the invasion expected any day now, all they’re doing is sitting back on their laurels and waiting for von Rundstedt’s armies to arrive and rescue them. But this chap seems entirely different. He’s serious about getting out of here.”

  Hackney paused, wondering if Stoner, the ascetic professor, had considered this aspect of his stubborn prisoner.

  “I hear on Sunday morning, a girl with a shotgun winkled him out,” Kettering said.

  “I believe I’ve met the young lady.” She’d certainly handled the German officer roughly enough, as if she thought she owned him.

  Kettering clasped his hands behind his back. “You know, back during the American colonial revolution, one of our chaps commented, even if we defeated all the men on that ungrateful continent, we’d still have to fight the women. I believe there’s an Austrian corporal in Berlin who’s about to learn the same lesson about Englishwomen.”

  Again he recalled the swinging fist, the crack as it landed on the German officer’s mouth, her utter fearlessness in charging him. “I’ll second that.”

  “Hope I get to meet her someday,” Kettering said to thin air. “Such a lass is worth consideration.”

  Hackney flipped to the next page on his pad. “And today?”

  “Oh, well, this morning I took a call directly from Leftenant Bruckmann at about ten. We did roughly the same thing, except between the turnip field across the way and the far side of Bowdon. We cornered him in a ravine near there and convinced him to surrender with a three aught three. Seemed a cultured man, educated, witty, that sort.” Kettering paused. “I admit I quite liked him. If it wasn’t for this ruddy war — ”

  Hackney cut him off. “Right.”

  “Then, as we were loading to move out, Mrs. Alcock ran screaming from her house. I came in here, stopping at the door as I told you, and didn’t know what to think.”

  “Thank you.” Hackney dated the scribbled statement, hoped he’d be able to read his own handwriting later, and flipped the notebook closed. “And again, we appreciate any assistance you can offer.”

  Kettering took the hint. “You seem to have this under control. I suppose I should get myself and my men back to Port Meadow and start on those statements for you.”

  As he strode off toward the waiting Bedford, his men scrambling about him, Arnussen and Dr. Harris emerged from the house and Constable Mercer appeared from the chicken runs.

  Mercer waved over his shoulder in the general direction of the clucking birds. “There’s all sorts of footprints out there in the dirt. I can identify Pamela’s from her brogues and Grace’s from her smaller shoes, but there’s at least three sets of boots I can’t sort out. One of them doesn’t come any closer to the house than the wall, but the other two march right up onto the lawn and vanish in the grass, one from the road, the other from the Dark.”

  “Good work, constable.” Arnussen wrote it down, of course. “Get on the horn to Patchbourne and Oxford, find someone qualified to make plaster casts of those bootprints. You’ll have to stick around until they get here and identify the prints for them.”

  “Certainly.” Mercer disappeared into the house.

  “I’ve rung for an ambulance to pick up Grace,” Dr. Harris said. “And I’ve rung Pamela’s sister, who’s cook at Margeaux Hall, to come for her. Do you want me to develop these snaps myself or would you rather I give you the film and let your lads take care of it?”

  The doctor’s slender fingers certainly looked capable. “Can you handle it?”

  He nodded. “We have a darkroom in the basement at Patchbourne hospital. I do a lot of surgery photos.”

  “Is there anything you don’t do, doctor?”

  Dr. Harris glanced back toward the house and its sad occupants. “I don’t butcher little girls.” He stalked across the lawn toward a motorbike and sidecar parked near the single Bedford truck still hulking on the grass verge.

  When he was out of earshot, Arnussen stepped up to Hackney’s shoulder. “Well?”r />
  Hackney watched as both vehicles started engines and then bounced onto the road, rolling off toward Patchbourne. “There go at least two possibilities right there.”

  The engines died in the distance. Arnussen stared at him, one vertical line between his Nordic blue eyes. “I can’t forget how the German lost his temper in the ballroom at Margeaux Hall.”

  “And I can’t forget how he let a woman corner him against a wall and smack him in the mouth. He didn’t even defend himself.”

  “Why would you suspect Kettering?”

  “He was out both times. He’s insinuated himself into the investigation, as a lot of clever murderers do. He’s also unmarried, or at least not wearing a ring, and interested in meeting the ladies roundabout.”

  “And Harris?”

  “Knew the victim, knows the house and area. Also unmarried. Also being helpful and working his way into the investigation. He’s mobile these days when many other men aren’t and into every sort of activity imaginable.”

  Arnussen peered at him sideways. “Is that now a recognized criminal trait? Should I quit the playhouse?”

  “No, but it gets him out. A man like that knows what’s going on. He could have known when the German officer was loose and arranged the crimes to implicate him. Of course,” he added when Arnussen opened his mouth again, “all we have to do is check alibis. These are possibilities, no more.”

  Arnussen sighed and slid his notepad into his pocket. “And what do your famous instincts tell you?”

  “I think, Axel old lad, it takes brass-bound balls to kill one girl in the middle of a bombing raid and another in her own bedroom while her mother’s on the grounds tending the chickens.”

  “Or someone who knows the mother’s habits?”

  “Or an utter fool.”

  They stared down the empty road, shoulder to shoulder.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  evening

  Margeaux Hall

  “I used to be a sergeant myself.” Hackney gestured toward the sofa.

  Tanyon perched on the sofa’s edge and rested his hands on his knees, dark eyes sliding sideways. Hackney followed his gaze to Stoner, sitting at his desk with the newly arrived dispatch cases before him. Bruckmann sat at the secretarial station, already taking notes. Hackney sighed and swiveled back.

  “Can’t exactly throw a man out of his own office, can I?” He lowered his voice to a rumble; hopefully it wouldn’t carry too far in the room’s deathly quiet. “He’s got work to do, too. and the sitting area in the ballroom seemed the best place for Sergeant Arnussen to question your men.”

  Tanyon shrugged, rubbing his blue jaw line. “I suppose we could have put you upstairs in Lieutenant Bruckmann’s office, or mine.”

  But Hackney shook his head. “If this establishment is so hush-hush, the less I wander in it, the better. We’ll just keep our voices down. Now tell me about Saturday night, starting at the dance.”

  “I didn’t go,” Tanyon said. “That swing music, it’s for the youngsters. The BBC had one of those Gilbert and Sullivan musical shows, so I stayed here and listened to it. I kept Carmichael upstairs in the guardroom and Glover at the front gate. I let the others go as it seemed a quiet night.” He rubbed his jaw again. “Little did I know.”

  “Do you recall where everyone else was?”

  “Lieutenant Bruckmann walked to Patchley Abbey, but he stayed back to do some work with the old man and didn’t leave until after nine.”

  Hackney nodded as he wrote. It accorded with what Bruckmann had told him during their interview earlier. Bruckmann hadn’t even made it to the pub before the klaxon went off, taking shelter in a drainage ditch and returning to Margeaux Hall as soon as the waves of bombers eased. And during the second murder, he’d been in company with others the entire day.

  Tanyon continued. “Miss Harriet went to the dance with Sally Owen — she’s the housemaid here — and the Alcocks, butler and cook, joined me. I don’t know about Peter Owen, the gardener, but the Wainwrights were in their rooms in the old gatehouse. Alcock and I cracked a window for air, making sure no light showed, but when the wind blew the right way and the music was soft, we could hear them yelling at each other something fierce.”

  “That happen often?” Hackney asked.

  “Seems like every night, recently.”

  He definitely made a note of that. “And Major and Miss Stoner?”

  “Miss Stoner said she was too tired to go to a dance, even for the war effort. So she and Mr. Stoner went to Woodrow when Lieutenant Bruckmann left for town.” Tanyon rubbed his jaw again, bristle rasping. “I’m not sure she likes that music, you know? Miss Harriet used to put flowers in her hair and dance all over the ballroom with my boys, but I never saw Miss Stoner do it.”

  The ghost of Harriet, wildflowers in her hair and skirt flying, swinging about the desks to Glenn Miller and Louis Armstrong in the arms of a young soldier, lightened the dark office. But the image which replaced it was from the Patchbourne hospital morgue.

  “Go on, sergeant.”

  Tanyon settled deeper into the sofa, his eyes losing focus as he stared at the trellis rug. “The air raid klaxon sounded just about nine thirty. I didn’t think we were in much danger. I mean, Margeaux Hall’s off the beaten path and nowhere near RAF Patchbourne or any other target. So I stayed where I was, listening to the show, when the Alcocks went off to the shelter. I heard the Wainwrights arguing in the entry hall on their way downstairs, so I know they went, too. Again, I don’t know about old Peter.”

  “Any idea what they were arguing about?” Hackney threw out the question as casually as he could.

  “When they went past, she was saying something about him living in cloud cuckoo-land and being too old for such nonsense.” Tanyon grinned. “She gave him what-for, she did.”

  “Wives do that sometimes. You a married man, sergeant?”

  “I am and they do.” Tanyon laughed but cut it short, glancing aside toward the officers. “My wife Edwina’s up Kirkcudbright way, as far from the air raids as she can be, looking after the town kiddies evacuated up north. She wanted to join me when I got this billet, it being such a nice one, but I don’t want to risk her down here among the bombs and right in the middle of the invasion when it happens. Besides, I can’t imagine I’m going to be here long enough. Sooner or later, the brass will put me back into the war, and then where would she be?”

  Where, indeed. Where would his own sweet Carolyn be, if the cancer hadn’t taken her? “So you stayed in the ballroom when the alarm went off.”

  “I did. Mr. Oldfield of the local Home Guard rang, shy of ten fifteen, letting us know a parachute was sighted. He asked if he could use my squad in the search. I told him to keep Pym and half of the boys and send the other half back here. I didn’t get quite half,” Tanyon added ruefully. “He only sent Whiteside and Reynolds and they arrived separately, but I put them to patrolling outside the wall opposite the road and Woodrow. I alerted Mr. Wainwright to guard his household, as he’s near the main gate. Then I went to Mr. Stoner, and he and Miss Stoner grabbed their shotguns and watched Woodrow, front and back, as well as their postern gate into the Hall. I took up a position out near the road, halfway between Glover at our gate and Mr. Wainwright at the main one. When Lieutenant Bruckmann returned, he took over at our gate and Glover moved back to join Whiteside and Reynolds.” He shrugged. “It’s been a while since I stood sentry duty. Man winds up doing all sorts of odd jobs on these little posts.”

  “So there are three gates into Margeaux Hall?”

  “That’s right — the main entrance, near the gatehouse where the Wainwrights are staying; our own entry, where we keep a sentry posted at all times; and the little postern gate to Woodrow.”

  “How long were you out there standing guard?” Hackney asked.

  “All night.” Tanyon shrugged again. “I patrolled and made rounds, taking reports from all positions, until Miss Stoner ran up at dawn to say she’d caught a German. I whistle
d for Glover and Whiteside, and ran to help.”

  Hackney paused. It sounded like a stroke of luck. “So if you made rounds of your sentry posts, you can account for all those you mentioned between about ten thirty Saturday night and dawn Sunday.”

  “That’s right.” But then Tanyon paused. “Well.”

  It figured. “Tell me.”

  “Carmichael,” Tanyon said. “It’s these young soldiers we’ve got, see. They’re conscripts with maybe six, eight weeks of training, they barely know how to march and shoot, and I haven’t had time enough to work them into a proper unit. They don’t understand some things, like how important it is not to leave your duty post.”

  “That’s pretty basic, sergeant.”

  “Well, I’m going to basic Carmichael if I catch him away from his post again. He’s our secondary radioman and it’s one of our most important positions, but he’s snuck away twice I know of. I’ve given him basic both times, once today, so he’d better have the idea now.” Tanyon sighed. “On Saturday night, I didn’t go inside and check on him. I stopped at the Hall’s garage twice, used the lorry’s radio to call, and he answered both times, but he might still have snuck away in between and I wouldn’t know.”

  Hackney wrote it all down. Behind him, he heard Stoner murmuring to Bruckmann but couldn’t discern any words. Good; whatever they were working on, he didn’t need to hear. “And today?”

  “Today was a fiasco from start to finish. That German, Major Faust, he’s determined to cause as much trouble as he can and he’s got a mouth on him that won’t quit. I know when he graduated from basic training, there was a sergeant out there blessing the day.”

  Tanyon described the day’s cockeyed events. Hackney grimaced as he scribbled. Fiasco was an appropriate term and Tanyon was lucky Stoner was a forgiving commander; many a sergeant had been broken for lesser evils.

  “Faust made some crack about walking from the station to the Hall and I wish we had. I could have tied his hands, sling be blowed, and gagged him, too. Instead, when the car stalled outside Mrs. Alcock’s chicken farm, he punched Norris and ducked out before I could set the brake. I saw him jump the wall into her property and heard the birds set up a rumpus, but by the time I got there I couldn’t see him anywhere. I should have stopped then and taken a good look about, but I figured he could only be a few seconds ahead of me and so I ran into the chicken runs looking for him. I only stopped to take back the gunbelt and send Norris to the Hall for help. Suddenly I realized the birds weren’t fussing, except at me, so I stopped and looked around then and saw him in the turnip field on the other side of the road, running for the Dark. That’s when I knocked on Mrs. Alcock’s door, interrupted her sweeping, and asked her to ring the Hall for me.”